HP Confirms Upcoming Slate to Run webOS

Monty Wong, HP Taiwan's vice president of personal computing systems group told Digitimes.com that Palm's Linux-based webOS will power smartphones and tablets, including the upcoming HP Slate, which is scheduled for an October release.

The HP Slate was originally announced to run Windows 7, but with the company's recent acquisition of Palm and reports of dissatisfaction with Windows 7 on the Slate, HP ditched Microsoft's OS in favor of the newly acquired Palm webOS.

Adding webOS to tablets would take an environment that already has iPhone OS, Android, Chrome, Ubuntu Lite and other scalable Linux distros in an already crowded consumer environment. Wong also hinted at a wide range of software and application support at launch, though no further details were given.